Hover Location Selection and Flight Path Optimization for UAV for Localization Applications

Abstract

A typical application of UAV is to locate ground targets.This paper proposes to let a UAV hover at predetermined positions to broadcast beacon signals.When a ground node receives beacons from at least three hovering positions,it can localize itself.This paper mainly considers how to choose the hovering positions and how to optimize the flight path of the UAV.This paper proposes two hovering schemes,and gives two path planning algorithms for the hovering schemes to optimize the flight path of the UAV.We prove that the flight paths under the two hovering schemes are the shortest paths respectively.Through simulations,it is verified that the proposed scheme can achieve complete coverage of the area,so that any ground node can be localized.Simulations show that the proposed schemes can achieve higher localization accuracy by adjusting the flying height of the UAV or the grid size in the hovering schemes.

Keywords

• uav|hovering position|path planning|ground target localization|shortest paths